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Period: 800 BCE to 500 BCE
Ancient Greece
-Archaic Greece saw advances in art, poetry and technology, but most of all it was the age in which the polis, or city-state, was invented.
-During the so-called “Greek Dark Ages” before the Archaic period, people lived scattered throughout Greece in small farming villages. As they grew larger, these villages began to evolve. Most built a marketplace and a community meeting place.
-These people monopolized political power. -
18 BCE
Ancient Roman Empire
-Ancient Rome grew from a small town on central Italy’s Tiber River into an empire that at its peak encompassed most of continental Europe, Britain, much of western Asia, northern Africa and the Mediterranean Islands.
-After 450 years as a republic, Rome became an empire in the wake of Julius Caesar’s rise and fall in the first century B.C.
-As legend has it, Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus, twin sons of Mars, the god of war. -
Aug 22, 1215
Magna Carta
-Thanks to years of unsuccessful foreign policies and heavy taxation demands, England’s King John was facing down a possible rebellion by the country’s powerful barons.
-John was not the first English king to grant concessions to his citizens in the form of a charter, though he was the first one to do so under threat of civil war.
-Later gained more leverage, however, as a result of the English crown’s need to fund the Crusades and pay a ransom for John’s brother and predecessor. -
Petition of Right
-a statement of civil liberties sent by the English Parliament to Charles I.
-Its spirit was soon violated by Charles, who continued to collect tonnage and poundage duties without Parliament's authorization and to prosecute citizens in an arbitrary manner.
-Charles, concerned to preserve his prerogative, gave an ambiguous reply, to which the Commons responded by withholding their offer of a much-needed money grant. -
Period: to
Montesquieu
-His mother and father both had noble histories, and his mother had a large monetary fortune.
-Baron de Montesquieu was a French political analyst who lived during the Age of Enlightenment. He is best known for his thoughts on the separation of powers.
-In 1721, he published Persian Letters. Persian was a satire, which is a text that uses sarcasm to convey its message, playing on the ridiculousness of society from the point of view of a visitor in Paris -
English Bill of Rights
-The Bill creates separation of powers, limits the powers of the king and queen, enhances the democratic election and bolsters freedom of speech.
-In England, during the Glorious Revolution of 1688, King James II abdicated and fled the country. He was succeeded by his daughter Mary and her Dutch husband, William of Orange.
-The English Bill of Rights, which was an act of Parliament, guaranteed certain rights of the citizens of England from the power of the crown. -
Iroquois
-The five Iroquois nations, characterizing themselves as "he people of the long house" were the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca.
-Iroquois Confederacy, also called Iroquois League, Five Nations, or (from 1722) Six Nations, confederation of five (later six) Indian tribes across upper New York state that during the 17th and 18th centuries played a strategic role in the struggle between the French and British for mastery of North America. -
Period: to
Thomas Paine
-Thomas Paine helped shape many of the ideas that marked the Age of Revolution. Published.
-Published in 1776, his highly popular “Common Sense” was the first pamphlet to advocate American independence.
-Paine immigrated to Philadelphia in 1774 and soon became acquainted with advocates of political change. -
Period: to
John Locke
-John Locke was an English philosopher and physician.
-Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as David Hume, Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant.
-He postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa.
-he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception.
